I been wondering what the typical weekly nutrition is like for a cyclist or sports 'person'. I would like to compare and I thought by posting mine it might be interesting for other people and perhaps if other people took time to post theirs, we could generate a few ideas as sometimes nutrition gets a bit predicatble and boring so here goes...

Late night snack:If I am really hungry I will either grab a handful of mixed almonds/walnuts, or 2x weetbix with skim milk, or really naughty grilled toast with oliver oil.

Gym nights:Same but just another 40g WPI protein powder with water post workout and perhaps some grilled toast for carbs.

Weekends:Generally dont stick to a routine apart from breakfast. I fail here as I love my saturday lunch and dinner and traditional sunday roast with the family. (weekends is when I pile the calories back on and eat more carbs than I should.) Then it starts again on Monday.

Dont get me wrong there are the odd days during the week when I will smash some chocolate or demolish a large bag of chips, or go to the cinema and eat popcorn and crap, but not often.

Whats your nutrition like or tips for recovery apart from protein and sleep.

eightsixboy wrote:Good diet, unless you struggle with weight gain I would eat more carbs, especially before a ride.

For me a typical week day would be

Breakfast:Bananawhey protein shakeMuesli bar

May have a can of tuna with salada around 10am if still hungry

Lunch:Varies alot but normally its eitherPasta with meat sauce, heaps of garlic and herps orSubway, nando's or something with protein

Afternoon:Tuna and biscuits and/or 3-4 weetbix without milk

Before dinner:Most days after work I will have a milo or tea and smash some tim tams or something I have a really quick metabolism so it doesn't seem to bother me weight wise

Dinner:Something with chicken or meat, I always make sure I have meat of some kind for dinner and try to have veggies as well most nights

Gym and cycling days I have a extra protein shake after my workout

Weekends for me are completely different, I generally wont eat alot in the morning unless Im going for a ride and will then purposely eat some carbs.

Great post thanks, I find this nutrition stuff really interesting. I am trying to shed a further 5 kilos hence lack of carbs in my diet at the moment. It's a finely tuned balancing act, constantly feel myself running low fuel towards end of my rides. Bonked once this month but always carry gels and carb bars and it's only a commute so not too bothered about that at the moment until I loose the weight. Nice to see other people using subway too. It's an emergency lunch for me when I get too lazy to prepare a salad!!

First my weekly activties:Cycling 210 to 350km per week (10x21km commutes plus weekend rides or extensions on the commute)Nothing else specific but one day of the weekend is a rest day- nothing beyond moderate exertion

Breakfast:1 cup of home made oat/barley muesli, mainly with nuts and minor dried fruit topped with full fat natural yoghurt, psyllium and LSA (eaten at work after morning commute)Water as needed (summer I need lots)

Dinner:All over the place as stated above, tonight having homemade pork, spinach and coriander dumplings (boiled), some nights is bbq/roast meat and roast veges, salads, pasta, noodles, stir fry, rice is mixed brown and white.Drink soda water with lemon squeezed into it. Dessert-currently cleaning up the kids easter treats

Weekends:Before longer rides drink a sustagen and piece fruit (banana if I can get it). Once I get back a choc milk is generally on the cards straight away). One breakfast is generally a fry up or pancakes and maybe go out for lunch but otherwise generally similar to above

Having to increase my iron intake meat and eggs plays a dominant role in my diet at the moment (doc told me to eat as many eggs as possible for the time being) along with quick recovery due to continuous commuting (eating quickly after commutes and lots of water). I try to minimise (not remove completely) intake of sugar (no soft drinks, lollies) and processed fatty foods like chips.

I use an app called "My Fitness Pal" to track my intakes and find it brilliant. I have yet to find a food that it did not have in it's database. For meals, I scan the bar codes of all the ingredients, add the quantites from the (entire) recepie and save it away. Then when I enter it, I choose my serving size, easy. It's free too.

I be honest, I find it hard to eat 5g per day even with 6 meals a day. When it comes to carbo loading I am for the 8g a day but have yet to get there. 6 is the best I get! To eat 8 I have to basically be eating constantly.

My day looks something like this;

Meal 1: Pre-morning ride (4:30am) Sustagen Sport (liquid meal suppliment)Meal 2: Poridge or weetbix or eggs/ham/toastMeal 3: Poridge or sandwichMeal 4: Two large breadrolls with some variation of meat and saladSnack: Vitaweet & pesto, sometimes another sanga or poridgeMeal 6: Dinner - whatever the wife cooks but always good CH0 contentMeal 7: Poridge or two slices of toast before bed.

lammy wrote:Great post thanks, I find this nutrition stuff really interesting. I am trying to shed a further 5 kilos hence lack of carbs in my diet at the moment. It's a finely tuned balancing act, constantly feel myself running low fuel towards end of my rides. Bonked once this month but always carry gels and carb bars and it's only a commute so not too bothered about that at the moment until I loose the weight. Nice to see other people using subway too. It's an emergency lunch for me when I get too lazy to prepare a salad!!

My Coach is strict with dropping carbs to loose weight. Your performace will suffer as you have discovered. Weight loss must be done very slowly when you have high levels of exercise. Eg, my daily target is 5g-6g/kg/day but when after a little weight loss I won't go below 4g/kg/day and even then I get frowns occasioanlly! I've only dropped 1.5kg so far this year with 10hr/week (usually 300-330kms) on the bike but then I am at the low end anyway, I can't loose much more. Maybe another two or three kgs.

What I would recommend is to eat more but keep the same level of carbs. You need carbs to fuel so don't reduce them but by upping the amount of food you eat (salads/meat) you will increase your metabolic rate. Typically I have a little spike in weight loss when carb loading believe it or not. I don't just up the % of carbs, rather I increase the total amount of food. Weightloss plans such as Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig operate on this principle of increasing metabilic rate thorough increased food intake but ofcurse they school you in eating right, not just more.

I eat the same amount of calories if Im cycling 100km a week or 1750km a week. 100k a week means lots of mental work. 1750km a week means no mental work. I need the same carb intake wether pushing the pedals hard or typing the keyboard hard.

I stay single digit body fat levels for the last 12 years. Regardless of training. Its not genetic cos my Mum is clinically obese.

I eat all the carbs I want with a baseline MINIMUM of 10g of carbs per kg of bodyweight per day. Fruit being the main preference. Up to 70 organic bananas a day. (yes my food bill can be up to 500$ a week)

Every day is different in terms of the abundant variety us vegans can eat with bananas and dates being a staple food for us. I eat till Im about to burst EVERY meal. You can do that when you are eating healthy foods.

My gf eats same. She has lost 20kg on this high carb vegan gig.

No animal in nature has to starve for weight loss. They just eat foods they could procure with their bare hands/teeth. For us that means plants. Sugary ones preferably.

If you eat like a Kenyan you will look like one. Not all runners are lean, but all Kenyans that eat their traditional diet are. This me and some Kenyan runners at a race in Thailand last year. They tell me they have eaten the same diet since they can remember from 3-4 years old.

^^^ Durianrider would be doing a lot of kms if he left his GPS in the car every week and uploaded the car trips to Strava. If he's doing that on a bike, with only fruit and veg to sustain him, I have no doubts that he'd peak at 70 bananas in a day. That's an enormous amount of calories.....

Xplora wrote:^^^ Durianrider would be doing a lot of kms if he left his GPS in the car every week and uploaded the car trips to Strava. If he's doing that on a bike, with only fruit and veg to sustain him, I have no doubts that he'd peak at 70 bananas in a day. That's an enormous amount of calories.....

and an enormous amount of eating. I guess if you have nothing better to do with your life than shove massive amounts of low calorie foods down your throat then that's fine. Otherwise...

I don't really eat a full breaky so to say. If I'm not riding I'll have a bowl of wheatbix. I usually ride in the early mornings or in afternoons so usually between 50-120km a day (done 3x 100km rides this week already). During a ride I'll drink anywhere from 750ml-2L of water. Outside of that my usual weekly 'nutrition' consists of grabbing a sausage roll + coke/chocolate breaka/powerade if I want to spend a bit more not far from home (usually on the way back). When I get home most times i polish off a 1L water bottle if I didn't buy a drink with my sausage roll. Lunch is usually what ever is available. Mostly noodles, mini quiches, fresh fish and chips with sour cream and sweet chilli, left over pizza (very rare for there to be left overs from the night before unless it wasn't homemade pizza and had to somehow get to the minimum order amount ), salt and vinegar chips on bread - say what you want but my god that's fantastic...ohohoh!!! Samboy Tomato flavored chips on bread mmm...mmm..mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (90's kid here ). I don't tend to have any soft drinks/coffee etc with lunch but I will have a few glasses of mango juice. Dinner usually consists of ravioli, pasta, pizza (including bacon pizza muffins - its your usual home made pizza with diced bits of bacon on sliced English muffins as the base then grilled - also good for a quick snack), chicken garlic balls (Ingham calls them Chicken Duets and a family pack of 4 lasts me a day or 2), fresh fish and chips with sour cream and sweet chilli or some type of farm animal - so your bacon, steak, ribs, eggs, lamb etc. On an average day I'll drink 5-6L of water (excluding when riding) and maybe 600ml of mango juice. If there are any zuper doopers in the freezer you better watch out cos I'll east them all.... except that space jaffa flavored one Friday and Saturday nights usually involve a lot of carb loading.

Somehow I'm still only 69kg for the last 4 years

Up to 70 organic bananas a day. (yes my food bill can be up to 500$ a week)

Bet you were struggling to get 7 bananas a week when there was that banana shortage after Cyclone Larry. Talk about selling an arm and a leg just to buy a bunch of bananas!

I don't really eat a full breaky so to say. If I'm not riding I'll have a bowl of wheatbix. I usually ride in the early mornings or in afternoons so usually between 50-120km a day (done 3x 100km rides this week already). During a ride I'll drink anywhere from 750ml-2L of water. Outside of that my usual weekly 'nutrition' consists of grabbing a sausage roll + coke/chocolate breaka/powerade if I want to spend a bit more not far from home (usually on the way back). When I get home most times i polish off a 1L water bottle if I didn't buy a drink with my sausage roll. Lunch is usually what ever is available. Mostly noodles, mini quiches, fresh fish and chips with sour cream and sweet chilli, left over pizza (very rare for there to be left overs from the night before unless it wasn't homemade pizza and had to somehow get to the minimum order amount ), salt and vinegar chips on bread - say what you want but my god that's fantastic...ohohoh!!! Samboy Tomato flavored chips on bread mmm...mmm..mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (90's kid here ). I don't tend to have any soft drinks/coffee etc with lunch but I will have a few glasses of mango juice. Dinner usually consists of ravioli, pasta, pizza (including bacon pizza muffins - its your usual home made pizza with diced bits of bacon on sliced English muffins as the base then grilled - also good for a quick snack), chicken garlic balls (Ingham calls them Chicken Duets and a family pack of 4 lasts me a day or 2), fresh fish and chips with sour cream and sweet chilli or some type of farm animal - so your bacon, steak, ribs, eggs, lamb etc. On an average day I'll drink 5-6L of water (excluding when riding) and maybe 600ml of mango juice. If there are any zuper doopers in the freezer you better watch out cos I'll east them all.... except that space jaffa flavored one Friday and Saturday nights usually involve a lot of carb loading.

Somehow I'm still only 69kg for the last 4 years

Up to 70 organic bananas a day. (yes my food bill can be up to 500$ a week)

Bet you were struggling to get 7 bananas a week when there was that banana shortage after Cyclone Larry. Talk about selling an arm and a leg just to buy a bunch of bananas!

Because you are training literally like a pro volume wise, you will stay lean eating a lot of junk food. If you get an injury though you will blow out accordingly. My concern though is your organ health with a diet so high in processed foods and animal products. Heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer etc all have been shown to be increased when eating the Standard Australian Diet aka SAD.

Congrats on the water drinking though. Thats a good start towards better health.

Xplora wrote:^^^ Durianrider would be doing a lot of kms if he left his GPS in the car every week and uploaded the car trips to Strava. If he's doing that on a bike, with only fruit and veg to sustain him, I have no doubts that he'd peak at 70 bananas in a day. That's an enormous amount of calories.....

and an enormous amount of eating. I guess if you have nothing better to do with your life than shove massive amounts of low calorie foods down your throat then that's fine. Otherwise...

Im just a full on foodie. I LOVE to eat. I understand not everyone loves food like I do but thats just me and I like eating LOTS and staying Tour De France lean even though my 5 min watts per kg is only 6.18 lol!

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